This story, in which a Swedish queen forsakes her country for love, only to end up with neither was –

‘Expensively presented, directed with care and craft by Rouben Mamoulian, it makes a flawless example of bespoke tailoring from Hollywood’s Golden Age

MGM may have spent a small fortune on the star’s vehicles but it was Garbo herself who dominated the screen:

‘…it was the indestructible, almost hermaphroditic loveliness of the unsmiling Swede that crowds clamoured to see.  No star before or since has been placed on quite so high a pedestal by a public so eager to live up to her.’

LH probably saw this one at the Bolton Capitol, forever associated in his mind with one studio:

‘Austere, featureless and unwelcoming, the Capitol always seemed to us a bit toffee-nosed, but that may have been because it invariably collard the big Metro-Goldwyn Mayer pictures.  That elegant lion, framed in an absurdly inappropriate motto about art being for art’s sake, was to me like one of the family…’

Big budgets were always in evidence, and there the young film fan enjoyed such prestige pictures as Mutiny on the Bounty and The Good Earth, but also –

‘Equal in stature with these epics were the Garbo films, each more sumptuous than the last… their production values were staggering… enjoyment is not a word I would have precisely connected with them, but I always sensed I was in the presence of a goddess.  The image that lingers most vividly is that last long-held close-up in Queen Christina when, having lost both throne and lover, she stands in the bow of the boat as it takes her away to a fate unknown.’